The present invention relates generally to design automation tools in electronic system design. More particularly, some embodiments of the invention provide methods and systems for automatic analysis of simulation test results for detection of anomalies in an electronic system.
As electronic system become more complex, the cost of design and testing continues to rise. As a result, design automation tools are becoming indispensible in electronic system designs. In an automatic design environment, simulation tools allow fast design and testing. Many design and testing activities are carried out in regression environments, which often execute large numbers of simulations overnight. A single simulation of a complex system can generate many mega-bytes of data in waveforms and log files. Such large number of simulation runs typically result in some failures that need to be classified and debugged efficiently.
The debug process is time critical, because it gates the fixes that need to take place before the next regression run. Letting known problems persist for the next regression run aggravates the problem, as the known failures need to be separated out before the new failures can be attended to. On the other hand, debug is a difficult and time consuming intellectual activity that requires a level of expertise. In a conventional design environment, debugging is usually carried out manually. The first action the human debugger performs is scanning through this myriad of data in search of a hint that will narrow down the scope of the problem. The ongoing regression process ties up valuable engineering resources in a constant loop of classification, debug, fix, and repeat.
Hence, methods and systems that can automate the debugging process are of great interest.